GigaOM

Of all the dumb things to say, politicians find something dumber. This morning’s
Wall Street Journal reports that Rep. Darrell Issa wrote to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and plugged CDMA. Good idea, perhaps, but for the wrong reasons. “We have learned that planners at the Department of Defense and USAID are currently envisioning using federal appropriations to deploy a European-based wireless technology known as GSM (’Groupe Speciale Mobile’ — this standard was developed by the French)
for this new Iraqi cellphone system,” Mr. Issa wrote. Issa, a republican, contends that if GSM technology is deployed in Iraq then most of the equipment for that is going to come from Europe. The “U.S. government will soon hand U.S. taxpayer dollars over to French, German, and other European cellphone equipment companies to build the new Iraqi cellphone system. This is not acceptable,” he wrote. The dim-wit does not realize that Motorola is one of the biggest players in GSM business, and Nokia and Ericsson are from Finland and Sweden, two countries which have been US friends for longer than the CDMA standard has been around. Of course there is that whole issue of GSM being used by 60 percent of the world, and that Iraqis who travel to say Kuwait cannot use CDMA handsets because mostly everyone in Middle East uses GSM. Issa is a millionaire - he founded Directed Electronics of Vista, which makes Viper car alarms. He received $4,500 from
Qualcomm in contributions. Read more on
high-technology contributions to politicans.